I spent fifteen years teaching. This is the same job with different material.

The classroom years

Over fifteen years as a K–12 band director across multiple Michigan school districts. A Master of Music Education from Bowling Green State University. A Michigan professional teaching certificate I still hold, and a community college ensemble I still conduct on the side, because I wasn't willing to give that part up.

What a band director actually does, most days, is take something that looks impossible on paper and break it down until a fourteen-year-old can do it. Then you check whether it landed — not whether they nodded, whether they can actually play it. You do that four or five times an hour, every hour, for fifteen years, and it stops being a skill and becomes a reflex.

Why I left

I didn't leave because I stopped loving it. I left because of a pattern I kept noticing in the staff room.

Teachers are careful people. They plan. They read the material. And I watched colleague after colleague get within a few years of retiring and discover that the plan they thought they had — a pension, a 403(b) somebody signed them up for at a district in-service in 2004, and hope — was thinner than they'd assumed. Not because they were careless. Because nobody had ever sat down and explained the options to them without trying to sell something in the same breath.

That bothered me more than it should have, and eventually it bothered me enough to do something about it.

How I work now

I'm an independent agent, which means I'm appointed with multiple A-rated carriers rather than captive to one. My focus is indexed universal life and tax-advantaged retirement strategy, and I also write mortgage protection, final expense, and Medicare supplement coverage when that's what somebody actually needs.

The first conversation is fifteen minutes and it's mostly me asking questions. If what you need is simpler and cheaper than what I'd make the most money on, I'll tell you, because I'd rather be the person you call in five years than the person you avoid.

I get paid by the carrier, if and when a policy is issued. You never write me a check for my time. You should know that up front and weigh what I say accordingly — that's true of every agent you'll ever talk to, most of them just don't say it out loud.

Outside of this

Three kids. Battle Creek. Still on a podium most weeks. Still can't listen to a marching band without critiquing the low brass.